A gravity model analysis of international migration to North America

Abstract

This study examines the influence of political, economic and demographic factors on the size and composition of migration flows to North America. A modified gravity model is specified and adjusted to include immigration regulations and characteristics specific to the origin and destination countries. For empirical test of the model, the time period of study is from 1976–1986, and 70 countries are covered for a total of 1540 observations of migration flows to Canada and the USA. The results reveal that the population of origin countries and the income of destination countries are two major determinants of migration to North America. High population areas of Asia and Latin America provided a large share of the immigrants. Domestic restrictions on political and civil freedom in origin countries are found to significantly impair migration to North America.

Determinants and dynamics of migration to OECD countries in a three-dimensional panel framework

“…First, consistent with the findings in the empirical literature (see also Karemera et al, 2000;Mayda, 2010), per capita income in the destination country turns out to be one of the key incentives for migration to OECD countries. For both changes and levels, the coefficient is positive and highly significant across sources of migration.…”

Migration and foreign direct investment: education matters

“…For example, Karemera et al (2000) used this model to test empirically determinants of international immigration and Porojan (2001) and Eaton and Kortum (1999) used this model to measure specific factors (technology, infrastructure and so on) in international trade, while Tong (2005), Javorcik et al (2010) and Buch et al (2006) used the gravity model to study the link between migration and foreign direct investment. Bhattacharya and Groznik (2008) employed the gravity model with cross-section dummy variables in studying the effect of migration on investment.…”

International migration: a panel data analysis of the determinants of bilateral flows

“…Second, my work is the first one I am aware of to use the OECD (1997) data on international migration to systematically investigate the drivers of international flows of migrants. Previous works have either used country cross-sections (Borjas 1987, Yang 1995, or have focused on a single destination country over time (Borjas and Bratsberg 1996, Clark, Hatton and Williamson 2002, Karemera, Oguledo and Davis 2000, Brücker, Siliverstovs, and Trübswetter 2003 or a single origin country over time (Yang 2003). 5 By extending the focus of the analysis to a multitude of origin and destination countries and taking advantage of both the time-series and cross-country variation in the data, I can test the robustness and broader validity of the results found in earlier works.…”

“…More recently, Clark, Hatton and Williamson (2002) and Karemera, Oguledo and Davis (2000) both focus on the fundamentals explaining immigrant inflows into the United States by country of origin in the last decades. Other papers in the literature that analyze the determinants of migration to the U.S. are Borjas (1987), Borjas and Bratsberg (1996) and Yang (1995).…”